So now I’m trusting you with my heart. I’m in love with someone, and I’m pretty sure he loves me back. He is brilliant, encouraging, funny, and irresistible to be around. I ache to marry him, but I’m not sure he feels the same way about marriage that I do. I’m over forty years old, and according to my mother I’m past my prime and destined for spinsterhood. Thus I feel the urgency to act fast.
How do I handle this situation? Is it okay for a woman to profess her feelings? And if so, do I tell him how I feel… even if it means he might break my heart?
Sincerely,
Aching Agnes
A: Dear Aching Agnes,
Heartbreak is a sad reality of life. It cannot be avoided, no matter how much we strive against it. My own heart breaks to tell you that I have been formally fired, and this will be my last column, so I’ll try to make it as brutally honest as I can.
I dared to dream big and ended up crushed. The old Sam would have told you to screw fear and chase that dream with reckless abandon, because not knowing is the worst heartbreak of all. But the new Sam knows better than this. The new Sam knows that if you have to fight so hard for it, maybe it’s not meant to happen.
I wish you better luck than I have. And there is nothing wrong with being a spinster. It’s become my life goal.
Sincerely,
Samantha
Chapter 36
Thomas Cook’s home office overflowed with case studies and science journals and research notes written in illegible shorthand. Carpenters’ “Superstar” playing from the turntable was punctuated by a mix of woeful sobs and self-congratulatory noises one might utter when making a million-dollar discovery.
“Guadalupe, I’ve made the discovery of a lifetime!” he yelled. “This will change everything!”
His voice echoed down the empty halls of his mansion, eventually reaching Guadalupe in the kitchen, where she rolled her eyes.
After forcing his housemaid Guadalupe to also serve as his private therapist to help him get over Sam, she had advised him to focus on improving himself. While Guadalupe meant for him to find a new hobby, he took it as a challenge to create “the ultimate man drug.”
Years ago he had undergone every innovation of “sex therapy,” including the only sheep testosterone treatment available, but when that proved ineffective, he had even begun looking into goat gland implants to solve his little problem that not even Guadalupe knew about. But when the medical board shut down livestock therapies, Cook took it upon himself to find his own cure.
One that would make him irresistible to women, Samantha Stanton in particular.
Rumors of a penis pump implant on the horizon had been circulating among the medical community, but they were years away from putting it on the treatment menu. So Cook, using his vast knowledge of chemical reactions and his personal drive for a working appendage, set out to create the first erectile dysfunction drug… and he was darn near close. If only the side effects didn’t include explosive diarrhea and excessive defecation. Nothing soiled an evening of passion like soiling the sheets. A few more tweaks, however, and he would have created the drug of the century. Who cared about curing cancer when you could have a great sex life with the girl of your dreams?
A man needed his masculinity in order to control the weaker sex, after all. And what did women want more than riches? A masculine man.
Finally Samantha Stanton would be his.
His plan had been flawless, so he thought. When kindly requesting a date from her didn’t work out, scare tactics that condemned her integrity seemed the logical next choice to force her to succumb. But when he heard about her stint behind bars, her felonious cellmate eyeing her like a human-sized voodoo doll, he quickly retreated.
He had never intended for Samantha to actually go to jail; she was of no use to him in prison. Charges dropped, he expected her to come running, grateful for the reprieve. But no, still she resisted him, even when he returned her potted plant as an I’m sorry, please take me back gesture.
When an Italian investor from the Gaslight Club, who Thomas conveniently overlooked as an associate of the Gambino crime family, suggested a little greenhouse sabotage to motivate Samantha, it seemed like the perfect solution to force a confrontation.
That had been a year ago.
He had even put off shuttering the doors of Women’s House Magazine for her. The rag had been a loss leader for years and was overdue for cutting it from the budget. The night he met Samantha and found out she worked for the doomed magazine, he had even felt guilty about the possibility of taking her job from her—it was the first time he really felt guilty about anything. So he postponed the closure.
And then Samantha’s magic touch happened. She singlehandedly turned the periodical around and made it profitable. More than that, she made it innovative. And there was nothing Thomas appreciated more than innovation.
Oh, and a working penis.
But now he was tired of giving Samantha excuses to avoid him. An impatient man, Thomas Cook grew tired of waiting. If wooing didn’t work, and incarceration didn’t nudge her, and personal property destruction wasn’t effective, maybe job loss and desperation would do the trick.
Yet a lingering doubt arose that perhaps she would never be his, for she was something of a female anomaly. Feminists—they simply had to be independent, didn’t they? And that was the whole problem. Most women he met weren’t independent, or at least didn’t want to be. They wanted to be wooed, dinners paid for, doors opened, doted on, marriage, a picket-fence house, kids, a perfectly appropriate life. Not demanding, but not demeaning either. They were the women who made up the majority of his social circle—aspiring but not inspiring. Women who weren’t going to blow his mind, but neither were they going to start a revolution.
With Samantha off the table, it left a small pool of desirable women left. More like a shallow puddle. In fact, not a single woman compared to Samantha—Sam, she had insisted, which made him smile.
The only other issue holding him back, besides his receding hairline, was his failure to fix his manhood problem. And once he did, world domination was his.
